(AP) -- Just as millions head to tanning beds to prepare for spring break, the Food and Drug Administration will be debating how to toughen warnings that those sunlamps pose a cancer risk. Yes, sunburns are particularly ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Virtually every patient diagnosed with breast cancer or melanoma undergoes lymph node biopsy to determine if their cancer has begun spreading in the body. Taking this biopsy involves an invasive and uncomfortable ...

(AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration has approved a breakthrough cancer medication from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. that researchers have heralded as the first drug to prolong the lives of patients with melanoma.

The journal Accounts of Chemical Research has published the article "Anion Transporters and Biological Systems", by Professor Ricardo Pérez Tomás, from the Department of Pathology and Experimental Therapy of the Faculty ...

In a new study, published in Science Translational Medicine, researchers at the University of Helsinki, Finland, investigated whether eradicating tumor-associated lymphatic vessels and the tumor cells they contain using photodynamic ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Yale Cancer Center and other institutions are the first to demonstrate how distinct groups of cells from the same tumor are capable of forming tumors. Their findings, which appear January ...

A new drug being developed to treat potentially deadly melanoma skin cancers has shown a promising ability to shrink secondary tumors, known as metastases, in the brain in patients with advanced forms of the disease, Australian ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first clinical trial in humans of a new technology: Cornell Dots, brightly glowing nanoparticles that can light up cancer cells in PET-optical imaging.

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project, which identified nearly 20,000 protein-coding genes, scientists have been trying to decipher the roles of those genes. A new approach developed at MIT, the Broad Institute, ...

Melanoma

Melanoma (pronounced /ˌmɛləˈnoʊmə/ ( listen)) is a malignant tumor of melanocytes which are found predominantly in skin but also in the bowel and the eye (see uveal melanoma). It is one of the less common types of skin cancer but causes the majority of skin cancer related deaths. Malignant melanoma is a serious type of skin cancer. It is due to uncontrolled growth of pigment cells, called melanocytes. Despite many years of intensive laboratory and clinical research, the sole effective cure is surgical resection of the primary tumor before it achieves a Breslow thickness greater than 1 mm.

Around 160,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed nationally each year, and it is more frequent in males and Caucasians. It is more common in Caucasian populations living in sunny climates than in other groups. According to a WHO report about 48,000 melanoma related deaths occur worldwide per year.

Malignant melanoma accounts for 75 percent of all deaths associated with skin cancer.

The treatment includes surgical removal of the tumor, adjuvant treatment, chemo- and immunotherapy, or radiation therapy.